[Dixielandjazz] Correct Record Speed - Part 2

[Joe Carbery]

Gene H. Anderson, in his book *The Original Hot Five Recordings of Louis
Armstrong, *has reproductions of some of the music manuscripts deposited for
copyright purposes. Comparing the keys of the sheet music with the keys that
the songs were recorded in shows agreement in concert key for Gut Bucket
Blues, King of the Zulus, Put "Em Down Blues, Hotter Than That and Savoy
Blues. The lead sheets submitted for Who'sit and Got No Blues are in
agreement with the recorded key if these sheets are meant for cornet; ie
they are a tone higher than concert.
(Interestingly, Savoy Blues is in G in the sheet and on the CD but Anderson
has transcribed it in Ab.)
The above information would indicate that, in the case of these recordings
at least, the recording speed was at or close to 78rpm.

Joe Carbery.


On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 1:11 PM, Stephen G Barbone <
barbonestreet at earthlink.net> wrote:

> here is part 2 from Neville about record speed.
>
>
>
> Sixty years ago I had a wind-up gramophone and used to play a trumpet
>
> along with th recordings of Louis Armstrong. The only way I managed, was to
> turn the speed control to very slow, that is about 58 RPM, making the key
> lower by about two and a half musical tones. Nowadays I re-record CDs on to
> cassette on a karaoke machine, which has variable speeds, and have now
> studied much of the popular recorded jazz of the twenties, and this
> discrepancy persists. From the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1921, to the
> West End Blues of Louis Armstrong in 1929, the recordings were deliberately
> made to sound fast and jazzy, it was good for business as the records sold
> well. The musicians liked it, because improvised playing at a relaxed slow
> speed was much easier, and led to fewer mistakes and expensive re-takes.
>
> If this really was the case, the questions to be addressed are: Why has
> this not come to light before? Why was it such a well kept secret?
>
> In 1925, it was not a secret. Gramophones had a governor control to set the
> speed where you liked. This new music had to sound jazzy and people played
> it at the speed they needed to dance the Charleston. Perhaps the first band
> to be recorded in this way was the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB) and
> everyone liked it. The records sold well and although the label said 78 RPM
> no one complained, so from then on jazz was recorded at 58 RPM which was
> fine for about 10 years. After that, the governor control mechanisms became
> obsolete, but jazz lovers had become used to the music sounding this way;
> jazzy and fast.
>
> Today if we see '78 RPM' on an old shellac, it is played at 78; no
> questions are asked. In fact, any suggestion that jazz recordings of the
> 1920s are all too fast is generally met with surprise and disbelief. But I
> have re-recorded a selection of tracks at 58 RPM with each one followed by a
> few bars at 78, and most listeners are amazed and convinced at the time,
> although they might not be so sure later, while some older jazz lovers
> cannot change their years of indoctrination and are hard to convince.
> Clearly there is something amiss with the speed of 1920s jazz. By 1929 it
> seems that the recording speed started to be altered: Bix Beiderbecke's
> recordings in New York, April 1928, were slightly faster, but it was only
> after 1930 that the Armstrong recordings were approaching 78 RPM. Even today
> the speed of some popular music is incorrect.
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